Balrog Babblings #113 – What To Do With a "Zombie" Site?

What do you do with a professional wrestling website when it becomes a zombie? What do you do with a professional wrestling website when it no longer serves the core purpose of any professional wrestling website – which is to be a resource to bring fans together for the latest [insert whatever your website “does” here]? Do you shut down the website? Do you give it away? Do you forwarded it to a thriving domain?

These are all the questions that have batted around my head for the last year or so. And while some of you may think that I am referring to TBLWrestling.com, I’m not. I’m actually referring to what we used to call our “sister site” – XHeadlines.com.

A very brief history on XHeadlines.com… I opened up that website about five years ago – sometime around August 2006. The purpose of the website was to be a run-of-the-mill resource that trafficked in what you’d find on any other professional wrestling website. You know, tawdry rumors, half-true facts, blatant bullshit, skewed opinions, etc. I wanted to see if I could create a website that was, essentially, a cash cow. At some point in the early history of XHeadlines.com, I realized that I didn’t want to bother with running that website as well as any other number of side projects that I had going. So… with that in mind, I asked Jacob Spades to operate the website and he did a phenomenal job.

However, as time goes on and people grow and change, Jacob just didn’t have the time to keep XHeadlines.com in his schedule and I resumed the position of Acting Webmaster. That is about as brief a story as I can tell about that website. I have no idea what to do with it, but here are the top four ideas that I’ve been considering.

Idea #1: Leave it as it is. If you’ve gone over to XHeadlines.com, you’ve probably noticed that it is kept “up to date” via feeds from TBLWrestling.com and TNAStars.com. Not a bad little way for either of those websites to generate additional hits (which they both do) nor is it a bad way to keep fresh content on the pages of XHeadlines.com. My concern about keeping the website as it is, though, is that I don’t like the idea of a website just sitting there essentially collecting dust.

Idea #2: Forward the domain to another website. Remarkably, XHeadlines.com still manages to get between 1,500 and 3,000 hits per day. Both TBLWrestling.com and TNAStars.com would receive a tremendous benefit from those hits funneling to either website. However, my concern about forwarding the domain is that you essentially kill it in the eyes of the search engines which, as any good webmaster can tell you, is the primary method of generating hits these days.

Idea #3: Sell the domain. This is the option that I like least of all because I really like owning the domain “XHeadlines.com.” Let’s face it – the site has a tremendous design as well as a phenomenal name so why sell what could eventually be worth a ton of money?

Idea #4: Redevelop the domain and make it bigger and badder than ever. This is the option that I like the most, but the one that will take absolutely too much of my time. Between all of the different things that I have to do in a day, creating an entirely brand new website is just not within reason for me at this time. Plus, XHeadlines.com was recently bumped from the biggest advertising program on the planet and thus would likely be unable to support itself in the long-term or pay for my time to rebuild it.

So those are the options on the table. What do you think I should do with XHeadlines.com? Do you have any other ideas? I’d be interested to read your take on what to do with my zombie website!